Not one of the first, the inventors, the wonder-workers,
Yet, water-born, he took what was theirs and there
And from it worked his own:
Let fountaining water fall among figures
Gesturing freely as the water sketched
At the height of its jet,
Changed jets to obelisks,
Bubbled the fish-scale domes,
Made doorways and windows bloom like lotuses
On the water-flat faces of palaces,
Cast, like a net’s cork floats, a colonnade around St. Peter’s fountain.
From the blown conch-shell water foams
In the tangled, stony water world of Bernini’s Rome.
From: http://www.sienese-shredder.com/2/james_schuyler-poems.html
Date: 2010 (published)
By: James Marcus Schuyler (1923-1991)
From Troubles of The World 